Ipari automatizlsi rendszerekben alkalmazott hibatr villamos gpeksszehosonlt vizsglata Comparative study of fault-tolerant electrical machines used in automated

industrial systems Studiu comparative al mainilor electrice utilizate n automatizri industriale

Ruba Mircea1, dr. Szab Lornd1, dr. Bir Kroly goston1, Kovacs Ern2
1

Kolozsvri Mszaki Egyetem, Villamosmrnki Kar, Villamosgpek Tanszk RO-400750 Cluj, P.O. Box 358, Romnia Tel.: +40-264-401-827, Fax.: +40-264-593-117 e-mail: Lorand.Szabo@mae.utcluj.ro web: http://users.utcluj.ro/~szabol/index.htm 2 Pannon Egyetem, Mszaki Informatikai Kar, Automatizls Tanszk H-8200 Veszprm, Egyetem u. 10., Magyarorszg Tel.: +36-88-624-461, Fax.: +36-88-624-545 e-mail: fodor@almos.vein.hu web: http://www.aut.vein.hu

Abstract: Nowadays the tendency in industrial automated systems is to implement equipments that can offer a continuous operation even in the event of fault occurrence. A system represents interconnection between feed bus bars, intelligent electronic devices and electromechanical assembles. The fault tolerance can be implemented in all the systems levels. The result will be a safe and continuous operating system. The electrical machines involved in safe automated equipments are the subject of the present study. Switched reluctance machine (SRM), and a permanent magnet synchronous machine with two attached inverter topologies will be presented regarding them fault tolerance. The conclusions will present, according to applications, the optimal fault tolerant machines. Rezumat: Tendina actual n domeniul automatizrilor industriale este de a oferi echipamente care au continuitate n funcionare chiar dup eventualele apariii ale unor defecte. Sistemele sunt formate din zone de alimentare, zone de comand i control inteligente, respectiv din ansamble electromecanice. Tolerana fa de defecte poate fi implementat fiecrui nivel al sistemului rezultnd n final un sistem ce ofer siguran i continuitate n funionare. Mainile electrice implicate n sistemele de automatizare devin subiectul prezentei lucrri. Diferite structuri de maini cu reluctan comutat, respectiv o main sincron cu magnei permaneni cu dou stricturi de invertor vor fi prezentate. Concluziile vor contrura alegerea optim a mainii electrice tolerante la defecte, funcie de aplicaie. sszefoglal: Tendina actual n domeniul automatizrilor industriale este de a oferi echipamente care au continuitate n funcionare chiar dup eventualele apariii ale unor defecte. Sistemele sunt formate din zone de alimentare, zone de comand i control inteligente, respectiv din ansamble electromecanice. Tolerana fa de defecte poate fi implementat fiecrui nivel al sistemului rezultnd n final un sistem ce ofer siguran i continuitate n funionare. Mainile electrice implicate n sistemele de automatizare devin subiectul prezentei lucrri. Diferite structuri de maini cu reluctan comutat, respectiv maini sincrone cu magnei permaneni vor fi prezentate. Concluziile vor contrura alegerea optim a mainii electrice tolerante la defecte, funcie de aplicaie.

1. INTRODUCTION
The concept of fault tolerance emerged in the field of information technology because of the demand of safety and reliability of a system. Later on more and more fields of engineering took over the concept, and the connection between fault tolerant equipments formed fault tolerant systems [1]. The meaning of system is the interconnection of components all reaching for the same goal, to serve an output for a given application. As errors are part of life, the possibility of their appearance in a system must be taken into account. Nevertheless fault tolerant systems are not so easy to achieve. A fault tolerant system must detect faults in its components and also must have the ability either to correct it (for example by switching to a backup unit when the main one fails) or to circumvent it (for example by reconfiguring the system) [2]. Nowadays the tendency in electrical engineering is to develop applications as safe as possible. The concept of fault tolerant device became a purpose for a lot of researchers. With the help of electrical power devices that evolved in the last years a combination between electric drives and machines pushed the limits of fault tolerance [3]. Any attempt of study in this area that exposes new results can become of important interest for all researchers working in the field of fault tolerance. The switched reluctance motor (SRM) can offer at lower costs a solution for the problem of fault tolerance. Permanent magnet synchronous machines involve higher manufacturing costs due to the permanent magnets embedded, but these are an endless force source, hence they cannot suffer faults. The drives attached to PMSM become widely used due to their high efficiency and power density. For example in vehicles PMSM drives can replace traditional mechanical actuators to achieve advantages such as higher efficiency and improved dynamical performance. It is apparent that certain functions such as electrically assisted steering and braking are of outermost importance and that their failure cannot be tolerated [4]. Thanks to the improvements in the field of power electronics and also to digital signal processing nowadays intelligent solutions can be provided in designing a fault tolerant electrical drive system. The separate phase feeding and control of the machines allow an easier approach of the fault tolerant tasks, offering better results [5].

2. THE PORPOSED MACHINES IN STUDY

Achieving a fault tolerant variant of a usual electrical machine requires modified topologies. In order to develop an efficient fault tolerant electrical machine is important to take into account also its losses. The main idea was to shorten the flux paths in the new motor structure, hence the shorter flux paths means lower iron losses. As a starting point in the study, a 12/8 SRM structure was considered, as that shown in Fig. 1a. The modified SRM has 14 rotor poles, as shown in Fig. 1b. A more complex structure was studied in [6]. There the number of stator and rotor poles, hence the phase number, were increased to 24/18.

a) 1. bra. The purposed SRM Structures

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b) 2. bra. The purposed PMSM Inverter Structures The winding scheme is a six phase duplex type, in other words each phase is doubled. This consists in phases placed at an angle of 180 mechanical degrees, in order to create the correct force distribution in the machine. In case of a fault on one channel the second one still will contribute to the torque generation and by its independence, in means of feeding and control on each channel, the fault tolerance is achieved. Both SRMs in study have the same stator, but they have different rotors and different phase/channel connections. Multiplication of rotor poles will increase the level of fault tolerance in means of torque development and safe operation. Initially for the 9-phased PMSM in discussion a special, 9-branches variant of the well-known H-bridge (full-bridge) converter (given in Fig. 2a) was proposed. In order of obtain high level of fault-tolerance for the 9-phase PMSM a special connection of its phases will be applied (see Fig. Error: Reference source not foundb)[6]. In this special scheme the winding is divided in 9 phases, grouped 3 by 3. Y connections are created for each group of 3 windings. The 3 groups are connected to a common power supply. Obviously this special connection of the fault-tolerant PMSM needs a particular converter. The starting point was the standard three-phase voltage source inverter. To each of the three groups an extra inverter leg is added. This connection can be used because the PMSM in study has Y-connected winding groups. If a winding fault occurs in the PMSM, the faulted phase is isolated by keeping open the corresponding two power switches. The supplementary inverter leg will continue to drive the currents, assuring practically the normal current through the remained healthy phases. Since the additional inverter leg is connected to the neutral point of the PMSM, the neutral current caries the phase currents of the remaining phases.

3. THE COUPLED SIMULATION PROGRAM

The simulations were performed using the co-simulation technique, by coupling two simulation environments to work together. The machines were built up using the Flux 2D finite element method (FEM) based electromagnetic field computation software.

3. bra. The attached circuit to each phase As the study is performed in transient with motion regime a mesh optimisation was required in order to reduce computation times. A compromise had to be made between the imposed mesh density, the computation accuracy and the available hardware. The simulation of the power converter is performed by using an electrical circuit build up in Electriflux, Flux 2D's circuit editor, and attached to the FEM model of the machine. As it can be seen (Fig. 3) each channel of one phase is modelled using two electrical coils, corresponding to the "come and go" sides of the winding. The reverse current management is handled by the diodes. In the electric circuit model the power switches were replaced by resistors. Practically these resistors will model the switches, by changing their resistance from a high value, as for the OFF state of the switch, to a low one, corresponding to the ON state of the transistor. These changes are obtained using the coupling of Flux 2D with MATLAB-Simulink. In fig. 4 the Simulink model of the entire SRM based fault tolerant drive system is given. For the PMSM, the Simulink model is nearly the same as for the

4. bra. Flux to Simulink Coupling for the SRM study SRM, the difference being noticed in the feed system using AC sources, instead of DC like the ones for the SRM. The link between Simulink and Flux 2D is implemented by the Coupling Flux2D S-function type block. The input values of the block (practically the signals to be transferred to Flux 2D) are the resistance values corresponding to each power switch. The S-function block will receive the output signals after the field computation (the torque, the phase currents and the rotor position) and will transfer them to Simulink. Using these values the parameters of the next simulation step will computed. This way the next step of simulation, and so on, will be computed step by step till the time limit is reached. The control strategy was implemented in SIMULINK, the most widely used platform in dynamic simulations. The PWM technique is used only on one switch of one phase, the second one is held open for the whole conducting period, hence practically the first modulates the current. The ON/OFF signals are

sent to the two switches: the resistance value of 100 k (OFF state) or 0.004 (ON state). The faults will be simulated by imposing OFF state for both switches of one phase. The precision of the PWM is set by the hysteresis band around the imposed current.

4. RESULTS OF SIMULATIONS. CONCUSIONS

For the two SRMs, different cases were studied in order to check their fault tolerance capability: i.) normal operating mode (reference case), ii.) open circuit of one channel, iii.) open circuit of one phase, iv.) open circuit of two channels from different phases, v.) open circuit of one phase and one channel from a different phase (worst case in study). Different computation times were set for the two machines, in a way to be able to observe (see Fig. 5) the effects of the faults. The 6-phase (12/14) machine was simulated 0.008 s and the other one 0.024 s. To create an image for the behaviour of the PMSM, the study cases involved in the paper were: i.) Normal operating mode ii.) One phase faulty, having open circuit iii.) Two phases faulty from different groups iv.) Three faulty phases from three different groups v.) Two phases faulty from one group and 1-1 from two other groups. During the transient simulation the machine is started without any faults. The first fault is imposed at 0.01 s, the second one at 0.02 s. When more faults are simulated these are set to appear also at 0.01 s. The characteristics for the SRM (Fig. 5a-5e) are the ones from the 12/14 structure, as [7] proved that this is the optimal one from the two purposed topologies. These are compared to the torque characteristics from the Y connected electronic inverter for the PSMS (Fig. 5f-5j). The torque ripples are lower in the case of PMSM in normal operating mode, than the ripples of the SRM in the same operational case. Against this case, in the event of fault occurrence, the PMSM will develop relatively high torque ripples due to the missing current in the windings. As the severity of the fault is increased, modelled by phase open circuit, the ripples are more and more obvious in the SRM torque characteristic. The increase is proportional with the severity for the PSMS too. For the SRM the electronic converter used was a typical H bridge one. To obtain a high level of fault tolerance a complex control system is required and high number machine's pole. The study demonstrated that increasing the number of rotor poles, separating the phases/channels, setting new connections between the existing windings, and using a complex control system will provide the best solution for the fault tolerant SRM based electrical drive system. In order to conclude and underline the best solution for an automate fault tolerant system, using a SRM is optimal as the ripples are lower in case of fault. If, the ripples are acceptable, the PMSM can be involved too, considering its higher manufacturing costs too. A discussion regarding costs can be held about inverters too. As more complex the inverter, as more the costs are higher. A compromise must be taken between the applications demand and the budget of the project. The coupled simulation program connecting two software environment (FLUX 2D and SIMULINK) was useful in studying the effects of different winding faults on the torque developing capacity of the SRM. The computing power of FLUX 2D thus joined the facilities of Simulink in simply describing the different working regimes of the machines and drives taken into study. The main problems were regarding the computation times. In order to obtain precise results and reasonable computation time the quality of the FEM model's mesh had to be lowered. The coupled simulation programs allow a high-quality simulation of closed-loop real time systems. Future ideas are regarding changes of the machine geometry, and new placing for the windings. A fault tolerant SRM is intended to be built up, using techniques applied in other categories of electrical machines. The resulted structure will be a combination of two already existing machines

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[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Blanke, M., "Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control," Springer Verlag, 2006. -40 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 Time [s] Generators, IEEE Husain, I., Radun, A., Nairus, J., Fault Analysis and Excitation Requirements for Switched Reluctance Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 17, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 67-72. Ertugrul, N., "LabVIEW for Electric Circuits, Machines, Drives, and Laboratories," Prentice Hall PTR, 2002. Wallmark, O., Harnefors, L., Clarson, O., "Control Algorithms for a Fault tolerant PMSM Drive," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 54, no. 4 (August 2007), pp. 1973-1980. Heimerdinger, W., Weinstock, C., "A Conceptual Framework for System Fault Tolerance," Technical Report CMU/SEI-92-TR-033, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh (USA), 1992. Szabo L. Ruba M. Fodorean D.: Study on a Simplified Converter Topology for Fault Tolerant Motor Drives, OPTIM, Brasov, Romania, 2008 ISBN 978-973-131-028-2, pp 197-202

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Ruba M., Szab L., Strete, Larisa, Viorel, I.-A., "Study on Fault Tolerant Switched Reluctance Machines," Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM '2008), Vilamoura (Portuglia), CD-n 1200.pdf.